The Complete L’Orgue Mystique by Charles Tournemire

This year Trinity Church in Solebury will be offering for its 2019 Lenten Series, a performance of the complete “L’Orgue Mystique” by the French organist and composer Charles Tournemire (1870-1939). This fifteen-hour, two-hundred-fifty-three movement magnum opus composed from 1927 to 1932 employs over three-hundred chants both as an act of devotion and as musical exegesis based upon a chant libretto with the goal of celebrating fifty-one Sundays and Liturgical Feasts throughout the Church Calendar. This rare performance of the entire work will be dispersed throughout the season of Lent and into the beginning of Holy Week with seventeen recitals given on Monday through Wednesday evenings at 7:30 p.m. on Trinity’s Martin Pasi Organ. This performance will be presented by the Bucks County organist Richard Spotts who has spent the past decade studying the work, performing it at churches, cathedrals, and universities across the country, and whose book on the subject is projected to be published in time for Tournemire’s sesquicentennial in 2020. All are welcome to this unique musical observance of the Lenten Season. (March 11, 12, 13 • March 18, 19, 20 • March 24, 25, 26 • April 1, 2, 3 • April 8, 9, 10 • April 15, 16)